Readers through Augmented Spaces

    • Lucca November 2017
    • Presentation speakers
      • Carolina Martins, FCT Programme in the Materialities of Literature University of Coimbra, Portugal

    Abstract:

    In this paper, I propose a reflection on the reader-object-space interaction in the context of graphic narratives installations, such as The Archivist (Daniel Goodbrey, 2010) or The Rut (Dave McKean, 2010) or Augmented Reality comic books, as Stu Campbell’s Modern Polaxis (2014). By reflecting on the reconfiguration of comics in the actual space or their combination of codex space with actual space, this paper aims to identify the movements of the reader between spaces, places, and objects as a way of connecting the spaces of discourse. This is, I will consider space not as a static device, but as an agent in which architectural structure and characteristics should be considered in their full potentialities, especially in their capacity of housing or surrounding objects and readers. In my perspective, graphic narrative installations and Augmented Reality comics propose metaleptic effects implied and generated by specific navigational devices and characteristics that suggest an ongoing co-influence between spatial (re)configurations, narrative, and characters’ and readers’ behaviours. So, by relating the notion of interactional metalepsis (Karin Kukkonen, 2011; Astrid Ensslin, 2011; Alice Bell, 2016) with spatial dynamics, the resulting paper will question spatial characteristics as promoters of a dynamic context that might function as an interference in the readers’ behaviours. This way, I argue that the simultaneous intertwining of space and narrative comply with the specificity of the media, hence contributing not only for an expanded notion of reading processes and devices, but also of the expansion of the readers’ relation with spaces through specific devices.